The present invention relates generally to a crop material processor and more particularly to a crop material processor for disintegrating baled crop materials.
Crop materials, such as straw, hay or other like forage, or animal bedding, are often baled for storage and transportation. In some instances, it is necessary to break the bale apart in order to spread the crop material for animal bedding or to dispense the crop material as feed.
A machine to disintegrate bales of crop material is sometimes known as a baled crop material processor. A typical machine is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,830,292 which issued to Frey on May 16, 1989. A baled crop material processor basically comprises a container for receiving the bales, a disintegrator often in the form of a roller with cutters or flails for chopping or shredding the material from the bale, a mechanism including manipulator rollers to direct the bale to the disintegrator and a discharge slot such that the crop material is discharged from the bail processor. Any number of manipulator rollers are possible, however, the disintegrator is located between and below two of the manipulator rollers. The baled crop material is supported and rotated by the rollers. As the crop material bale rotates the disintegrator breaks apart the outer portion of the baled crop material first and then proceeds to break apart the crop material towards the centre of the bale until the crop material is completely broken apart. As the baled crop material is disintegrated, the loose crop material is driven by the flails to be discharged from the machine through the discharge slot. The discharged crop material can be formed into windrows or discharged into feed bunks to be used as feed or it may be scattered to be used as animal bedding.
One of the major problems which appears to occur with baled crop material processors is that they tend to jam. This occurs when loose crop material wraps around the manipulator rollers or passes between the manipulator rollers and the walls of the container. Jams are generally dislodged by reversing the direction of rotation of the manipulator rollers. It has been found that jamming rarely occurs when the bale is firm, the result being that the only loose crop material that is produced, is produced by the disintegrator in the disintegrator opening between the manipulator rollers; this loose crop material is immediately driven out of the processor through the discharge slot. Loose crop material may be created by the manipulator rollers themselves, the rotation of the bale may shake it apart or the engaging action of the rollers may tear or break the crop material bale apart.
Usually, as the crop material bale rotates, the amount of crop material disintegrated is not uniform from the outside to the inside of the crop material bale. This occurs because the outside is usually much harder than the inside, that is the inside is more loosely baled. Thus, when the exterior of the crop material bale is being disintegrated, that is at the start of the process, the crop material bale is hard. Rotating a hard crop material bale is relatively easy, and therefore uniform disintegration takes place along the periphery of the crop material bale. Furthermore, the crop material bale only breaks apart in the area of disintegration, the other parts of the periphery remain intact due to the hardness of the bale. However, once the softer, inner core of the crop material is reached, the crop material bale is often too loose to remain intact. Therefore, the softer, inner core is sometimes difficult to rotate. The softer inner core tends to break apart because of the rotation, and this loose crop material can cause jamming and impede rotation of the manipulator rollers.
Also, the teeth on the manipulator rollers engage the crop material bale to effect the rotation. This engaging action tends to grab the crop material bale. This grabbing action can be very similar to the disintegration action, and hence loose crop material can be created. Furthermore the grabbing action may not release the crop material bale and hence pull the crop material around the roller causing a wrap around situation.
Moreover, if the crop material bale moves longitudinally and impacts the front or back wall of the container, then the crop material may be torn from the bale by the wall or the rotation of the crop material bale may be impeded by the contact with the wall of the container. Often, the result of this impeded rotation is that the teeth of the manipulator rollers tend to break the crop material bale apart, and this crop material may jam the roller, which is undesirable.
A further difficultly is to control bales of irregular shape such as rectangular bales, frozen bales or bales that have been stored for a period of time and are flat on one side. Sometimes, irregularly shaped bales can cause a jam to occur since they do not rotate properly.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need to provide a crop material processor for disintegrating baled crop material capable of keeping to a minimum the amount of loose crop material in the processor that may cause jamming.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide a baled crop material processor that minimizes jamming.
These and other objects are achieved in a baled crop material processor for disintegrating baled crop material. The crop material processor comprises a container having a bottom, a front wall, a back wall, and left and right side walls for receiving and containing the crop material. A disintegrator having a flail roller that is rotatable about its own longitudinal axis is mounted to extend between the front and the back of the container. A number of flails are pivotally fixed about the flail roller such that they will extend radially from the flail roller as the flail roller rotates. The processor further includes a discharge opening at the bottom of either the left or the right side wall to discharge the disintegrated baled crop material and a mechanism for supporting and manipulating the baled crop material so that it will be moved to the disintegrator in such a manner that disintegration of the baled crop material is carried out primarily by the disintegrator.
In accordance with an aspect of this invention, the processor may be unidirectional, discharging the disintegrated crop material either to the left or to the right of the processor, or the processor may be bidirectional with a mechanism for allowing the operator to discharge from the left or the right. The direction of rotation of the flail roller will depend on the side of the processor that discharge is desired. The flail roller will rotate in the counter-clockwise direction for discharge to the left and in the clockwise direction for discharge to the right.
In accordance with another aspect of the invention, the support and manipulation mechanism includes at least two manipulator rollers rotatably mounted inside the container substantially parallel to the flail roller wherein at least one roller is located on each side of the flail roller to define a disintegration opening where crop material is accessed by the disintegrator. The cross-section of the manipulator rollers may be substantially square. A number of paddles that are channel shaped with a projecting end that is curved outwardly are mounted about each of the rollers. The paddles are positioned such that the plane of the paddles is at an angle xcex8 to a plane through the axis of the manipulator roller, where 0xe2x89xa6xcex8xe2x89xa690xc2x0 and may be in the order of 45xc2x0.
With regard to a particular aspect of this invention, the lead surface of the paddles are made to face in different directions. In particular, the lead surface of the paddles at the front of the processor face towards the back of the processor, and the lead surface of the paddles at the back of the processor face towards the front of the processor.
With regard to another aspect of the invention, the processor includes a mechanism for connection between the processor flail roller and a source of rotating power to assure that the flail roller rotates in the desired direction. In particular for a bidirectional processor, the direction of rotation may be switched from one to the other.
In accordance with another aspect of this invention, each of the side walls are shaped to form a protrusion into the container in close proximity to the paddles of the manipulator rollers. Each of the side walls also has a substantially vertical wall portion below the protrusions and a wall portion sloping outwardly from above the protrusion.
The support mechanism further includes a number of hoops mounted in spaced relationship within the container along the container length and positioned above and substantially perpendicular to the flail roller and the manipulator rollers.
Another particular aspect of the present invention is exemplified in the flails that are mounted on the flail roller, each flail comprises a bar with one end having at least one prong with a bevelled edge and the other end having a hollow cylindrical section to receive a bolt for pivotally mounting the flail to the flail roller.